This Week In Quotes: July 8 – July 13

Is there any policy reason why Obama won’t agree to a short-term deal or is this really as horribly cynical as it looks – that he simply refuses to do anything that might complicate his reelection campaign, even if that means a default by the United States? — AllahPundit

So a dollar used to purchase a median-price, single-family California home in 1980 would have grown to $5.63 in 2007, and to $2.98 in 2010. The same dollar invested in the Dow Jones Industrial Index would have been worth $14.41 in 2007, and $11.49 in 2010. — Robert Bridges

For every job created in America over the last three months, Obama created 12.8 donors…As Obama was adding 552,000 donors to his campaign, the nation added 340,000 unemployed people to the work force. — Conn Carroll

We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money. — Energy Secretary Steven Chu on banning incandescent lightbulbs

(David Brooks is) not a conservative. He’s a moderate. He’s open to all views. — Charles Krauthammer

In severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems. — David Ludwig

Republicans not be reduced to being the tax collectors for the Obama economy. — Mitch McConnell

We might as well do it now. Pull off the band aid. Eat our peas. — Barack Obama

Medicare in particular will run out of money, and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up. — Barack Obama

Nobody’s looking to raise taxes right now. We’re talking about potentially 2013 and the out years. — Barack Obama

To paraphrase Hemingway, people go broke slowly and then all at once. We’ve been slowly going broke for years, but now it’s happening all at once as the world’s capital markets are demanding action from us, yet Obama assumes we’ll just go borrow another cup of sugar from some increasingly impatient neighbor. We cannot knock on anyone’s door anymore. And we don’t have any time to wait for Washington to start behaving responsibly. We’ll be Greece before these D.C. politicians’ false promises are over. We must force government to live within its means, just as every business and household does. — Sarah Palin

Ah, but we are so much more enlightened today — or are we? Will anyone ever call us “the greatest generation”? — Thomas Sowell

A world that becomes more Muslim becomes less everything else: First it’s Jews, already fleeing Malmo in Sweden. Then it’s homosexuals, already under siege from gay-bashing in Amsterdam, “the most tolerant city in Europe”. Then it’s uncovered women, already targeted for rape in Oslo and other Continental cities. And, if you don’t any longer have any Jews or (officially) any gays or (increasingly) uncovered women, there are always just Christians in general, from Egypt to Pakistan. More space for Islam means less space for everything else, and in the end less space for you. — Mark Steyn

It’s a common refrain among those who lust to increase government’s size and power: Every failed measure justifies more of the same. Poverty programs make it harder to escape poverty? We need more poverty programs! Racial preferences heighten racial division? We need more racial preferences! And a diversity manual for every janitor in the country! When ObamaCare ends up driving the costs of medicine up and the quality and availability down, you can bet the people who created that monstrosity will claim it failed only because it didn’t go far enough.

Let’s generalize this into the First Rule of Liberalism: Government failure always justifies more government. As Obama said today, complaining about Republican pressure to cut spending: “I’d rather be talking about stuff that everybody welcomes–like new programs.” Fortunately for the country, the voters don’t always agree. — James Taranto